Contents

Get started with Service Mapping

SAVE AS PDF

Get started with Service Mapping

Service Mapping discovers all
business services in your organization and builds a comprehensive map of all devices,
applications, and configuration profiles used in these business services.

A business service is a set of interconnected applications and hosts which are
configured to offer a service to the organization. It can be internal, like an
organization email system, or it can be customer-facing, like an organization web
site. For example, creating financial reports through a web-based application
requires a computer, web server, application server, databases, middleware, and
network infrastructure. These applications and hosts are all configured to offer the
service of financial reporting.

Typically, IT departments create and maintain an inventory that treats devices and
applications as standalone, independent objects. Connections between the devices and
applications are not included. This is usually referred to as horizontal discovery. This
method does not address the biggest challenge for IT departments, which is understanding
the connection and dependencies between each object.

Service Mapping maps dependencies,
based on a connection between devices and applications. This method is referred to as
top-down mapping. The top-down mapping helps you immediately see the impact of a
problematic object on the rest of the business service operation.

Figure 1. Comparison of horizontal and top-down mapping results

Business service maps show infrastructure objects and semantic connections between them.
Service Mapping regenerates
business service maps regularly, to keep them updated and relevant. Any faulty objects
are shown along with the devices and applications they affect, providing a visual clue
of the state of the business service.

Data collected and organized by Service Mapping to Event Management and Dependency
Views. With Event Management, you
can view events to take actions for recovering your organization business services.

Service Mapping, in combination
with Event Management and Discovery provides the
functionality that was provided by ServiceWatch in earlier releases.

Service Mapping supports domain
separation. If your ServiceNow platform
uses domain separation, administrators and users can only see and manage business
services belonging to their own domain.

A business service is a set of interconnected applications and hosts which are configured to offer a service to the organization. Business service can be internal, like organization email system or customer-facing, like an organization web site.